Union jack shorts, bulldog t-shirts, bars named after soap operas, hen parties in Malaga. Tell us about your encounters with the worst (or best) of our fair country's travelers around the world. Alternatively, tell us about your own doomed quest to find a decent cup of tea in Moscow.

Crete
Some idiotic friend of mine thought three of us would have fun if we spent a week in Malia. Naturally we didn’t – a good omen of what to come was the first pub we saw being called the Rover’s fucking Return.After a single day in the area, spent being barged variously by ‘OY OY’ bellowing pricks and dismayed pensioners, I’d had enough, and was getting ready to go off and find a place for myself in the hills so I could eat olives and whatnot and generally pretend I’m better than everyone else. But first a drink.

It was a deserted pub. I took a seat at the bar and waited for staff to appear. No-one was forthcoming. I coughed, scraped my chair ostentatiously, even whistled. Then just as I was about to leave someone walked up through the hatch in the floor.It’s pointless saying this here, but she genuinely was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And utterly charming. Her name meant ‘Happy’ in English. Her family owned the bar, and she was just working there until she could move to England. I stayed in that bar, alone, for the next six hours, being as brilliant as I possibly could until she agreed to meet me after her shift. But it was VERY important we be discreet, as behind all the Brit-baiting guff this was a very orthodox, religious community, and consorting with some package holiday oik would land her in a world of trouble. I nodded eagerly – anything for her. “Ok,” she said. “Meet me outside the church, two miles up the road, at midnight.”I ran back to my apartment where my friends were shaving and all that cock, getting ready for a night of shots puke and AIDS. “I’m not coming out with you, you fucking cretins!” I bellowed joyously as I frantically brushed my teeth. “I’ve met someone, a real SOMEONE, not some scab-minged trollop from Burnley, a real GODDESS! And we’re going to BE TOGETHER!” And I shot past the losers and back out into the night.By my reckoning I had an hour to find this church, so I set off on foot. I was very quickly away from the resorts and bars and hotels (our apartment was cheap for a reason), and after a mile found myself on a deserted road surrounded by fields. I was beginning to lose hope, when through the gloom I saw it – a beautiful, white house of god, sat nestled among a handful of villas with a stunning public square in front of it. No-one was about. I took a seat on a low wall, and waited.

Then the worries kicked in.I didn’t know this woman. She’s already said she’s close to her family and very conservative. Why on earth is she interested in me? She’s way out of my league. And I’m a tourist. A lone tourist at that. A lone, drunk, tourist in an isolated place at dark … Hold on a minute. This is a fucking setup. That bitch and her Greek fuck brothers are going to mug me. SHIT. I must find a weapon!I scrabbled around until I found an absolute belter of a rock. Like an enormous pumice stone, suitable for both stabbing and bludgeoning. I leapt over and crouched up against the wall, hiding, waiting, brandishing my lethal igneous club. “Those crooks have underestimated me!” I thought as I silently swiped and parried at imagined foes. “NOW who’s the mug?”I heard a moped coming.I peeped over the wall, ready to pounce and attack the marauding Mods. But it was just her. I watched her pull up in the square and glance around, puzzled. I waited for her backup to turn up. They didn’t. There was nothing for it – I had to take a chance. I rammed the terrible stone deep into my pocket, silently vaulted back over the wall, and swaggered up to her. “Just you then?” I said. I didn’t waggle my eyebrow knowingly, but I felt I should have.Of course it was just her. And she seemed genuinely happy I’d turned up. Before I knew it, like some shit film we were locked in an embrace, kissing chastely in front of a church in a deserted Mediterranean street at midnight, and muttering a load of bollocks in two different languages. It remains to this day the most implausibly romantic scene I’ve ever been involved in, and for a moment, under the stars, I saw a wonderful future ahead of us.

And then it all went to shit.

She’d said she was conservative. She’d explained she was religious. We met at a church, for fuck’s sake. She was clearly nervous about all this, and I had to understand this was a slow burning thing. And I did. I had told her I did. I wasn’t going to rush anything.So why the FUCK, she suddenly wondered, was I rubbing a hideously large, grotesquely girthed, implausibly firm erection against her minge?She stepped away in fear and stared at me. Stared at my crotch. There was no hiding it – I was a monster. A whale-dicked abnormality. A threat to the virginal sanctity of the whole island. What could I say? “OH NO, IT’S NOT MY VIOLENTLY STIFF PENIS, IT’S JUST THE ROCK I WAS GOING TO BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH”?She was crying as she leapt back onto her moped and rode into the night. Dejected, I walked back to my apartment, went out with my friends, and caught chlamydia. Again.
(Wet-chinned bag shankerCannot parse Wogan, Thu 24 Apr 2014, 15:17,
closed)

The Greeks do have the right idea.
Pick one town on each island and just agree to write it off as a shit-hole. Be it Malia on Crete, Kardamena on Kos or Kavos perfectly placed at the furthest possible tip of Corfu. And I do mean 'tip'.

Then everyone else can pick and choose where to go for a quick sunny civilised break and happily avoid the end-of-school pissheads, chavs, burnt old Geordies and five generations of Scousers on holiday together. Nowhere else in the world is that organised.

The only slightly misjudged one is Laganas on Zakynthos, which ends up staggering and puking into an important natural reserve.
(joefishIt's hard for thee to kick against the pricks, Thu 24 Apr 2014, 19:03,
closed)

bravo!
have a click
(katie hopkinstelling it where its at, Thu 24 Apr 2014, 21:04,
closed)